# John Joseph

> Operator | Scaled Products to 500M+ MAU | Founder (PacketZoom → later acquired by Roblox) | Former CEO/COO | Building Trunk (AI Bookkeeping @ Mozilla)

Location: Burlingame, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/johnjoseph

I don’t really think of myself as a product manager.
I think of myself as an operator who builds products.
 
I’ve scaled products to 500M+ MAU, closed Fortune 500 customers before the product was fully built, and built a company that was acquired by Roblox. I’ve also failed — Ondaka ran out of runway after COVID wiped out the oil and gas market. I learned more from that than from most of the wins.
 
Most of my career has been in situations where there’s no clear path yet — early-stage products, broken systems, or teams trying to figure out what actually works. That’s where I do my best work. When things stall or fall apart, I don’t step back. I take one more step and figure out what needs to happen next.
 
Right now I’m at Mozilla building Trunk — an AI-powered bookkeeping product for solopreneurs. It’s not just a product problem. It’s a full business: onboarding, trust, pricing, retention, and getting to something people will actually pay for. I operate as the de facto GM on it.
 
Before Mozilla, I was a founder, CEO, and COO across multiple startups in AI, live streaming, and infrastructure. I’ve raised capital, built teams, and taken products from idea to launch in environments where there wasn’t a playbook.
 
I tend to operate at the intersection of product, engineering, and operations — not just building things, but making sure they actually work as businesses.
 
What I care about is simple: building things people use, trust, and are willing to pay for.

## Work Experience
### Principal Product Manager, New Products (0-1) @ Mozilla
Jan 2024 – Present | Burlingame, CA
• Leading development of Trunk, an AI-powered bookkeeping product designed to function as an "invisible bookkeeper" for solopreneurs
• Operating as the de facto GM — owning direction across product, onboarding, pricing, and early go-to-market
• Building core trust infrastructure (Gmail + Stripe ingestion, transaction accuracy, deduplication) — the systems that determine whether users stay or leave
• Acting as the cross-functional anchor across product, engineering, and leadership to maintain momentum in a 0→1 environment
• Defining and testing early growth approaches including referral loops, content, and partnerships, with a focus on driving paid conversion and retention

### Managing Partner @ Candid Method
Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area
A consulting vehicle I use for product and strategy work with early-stage founders. Focused on the 0→1 phase — when the problem is real but the path isn’t clear. Engagements typically involve product direction, go-to-market, and helping teams figure out what actually needs to happen next.

### Member (P19) @ StartX.
Jan 2019 – Present | Palo Alto, CA

### Head of Product & Operations @ Muxy
Jan 2021 – Jan 2024
• Achieved a 3x increase in revenue by transforming the business model from boutique development to a scalable SaaS platform
• Unified product vision and go-to-market strategy across engineering, marketing, and sales
• Worked directly with the board on strategy, stakeholder management, and company direction
• Established operations infrastructure and revenue forecasting to accurately assess growth potential

### Founder / Chief Product Officer & CEO @ Ondaka
Jan 2017 – Jan 2022 | Burlingame, CA
AI-powered 3D visualization platform for industrial digital twins in heavy industry.

• Raised $2M from angel investors and VCs including Alchemist Accelerator and Plug & Play Ventures
• Closed contracts with Fortune 500 customers including Schlumberger — in under 5 weeks — before the product was fully built
• Named "Most Promising Company" at the world's largest conference in our vertical
• Accepted into StartX (Stanford’s accelerator) and Creative Destruction Lab without a Stanford-affiliated founder on the team
• Shut down in 2022 after COVID eliminated the oil and gas market opportunity the company was built around

### Graduate / Member @ Creative Destruction Lab
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | Calgary, AB
Over the course of nine months, Ondaka participated in the Creative Destruction Lab: Energy (CDL), a rigorous mentorship program focused on enabling deep science and technology companies to rapidly scale and focused specifically on the energy sector. We are proud to announce that Ondaka was one of only 10 companies that successfully completed this highly competitive program and can proudly say that we didn't just participate in the program but are official CDL Graduates. 

Thank you to the CDL-Rockies community and our world-class mentors for setting challenging objectives that refined our strategy and accelerated our success.

We look forward to continuing our journey to #buildsomethingmassive as CDL Alumni.

### Member @ Alchemist Accelerator
Jan 2017 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area

### Founder / Head of Product & Operations @ PacketZoom (later acquired by Roblox)
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | San Mateo, CA
Protocol-based SDK that made content delivery to mobile apps 5x faster than TCP.

• Raised $6M from First Round Capital and Baseline
• Grew customer base from 0 to 50 apps in production, including large publicly traded companies collecting billions of data points per month
• Hit #1 on Product Hunt at launch, driving a 10x increase in new customers
• Scaled from 2 people and a technical prototype to a team of 20+ with significant ARR
• Led executive transition by hiring a new CEO as the company moved into its next phase

### VP Product & Engineering @ PlayHaven (Acquired by Science, Inc.)
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco, CA
• Scaled the product from 400 games and 45M MAU to 5,000+ games and 500M+ MAU
• Managed 35+ engineers across multiple departments with a $5M operational budget
• Improved publisher adoption by 75% by expanding platform support across multiple game engines
• Improved retention, engagement, and monetization by refining a two-sided marketplace

### Senior Director, Business Development & Product Strategy @ PlayHaven (Acquired by Science, Inc.)
Jan 2011 – Jan 2012
• Evaluated platform specific SDKs and led overhaul of platform coverage, bringing in experts to rebuild our offering which drove publisher adoption up 75%
• Presented at industry conferences (APPNation, Unite) to promote our platform and build partner relationships
• Built relationships and negotiated partnership agreements with 3rd party technology companies to be integrated into our platform

### Senior Product Manager, Social Entertainment Community @ Hands-On Mobile
Jan 2008 – Jan 2011
• Mobile and social game Publisher that worked with large IP holders and launched an early indie developer network
• Launched a revenue-generating mobile developer network within 6 months by developing the go-to-market strategy and recruiting domestic and international developers.
• Achieved a 500% increase in MAU and DARPU within 6 months by taking ownership and enhancing a branded, synchronous multiplayer social game
• Foster long-term relationships with developers while producing 9 mobile game titles including critically acclaimed and award-winning original IP as well as large international brands
• Improved product development efficiency by transforming the workflow from a traditional waterfall model to an agile development approach.
• Present at industry conferences (GDC, iDev360) to recruit to our network, and promote our corporate strategy to independent developers

### Senior Product Manager, Mobile @ Rearden Commerce
Jan 2007 – Jan 2008
•	Led a cross-functional team of designers, software engineers, and QA engineers to design and build products
•	Managed 3rd party development team to ensure that external dependencies were completed as contractually required
•	Determined the overall product road map by analyzing the state of the industry, using market research, customer feedback and competitive feature set analysis to drive decision making
•	Built business cases and evaluated new products and services from vendors in terms of alignment with overall corporate strategy, value to the customer, ease of deployment, and impact to product P&L

### Product Manager - Messaging @ Virgin Mobile USA
Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 | Warren, NJ
•	Managed all aspects of the operational relationship with Yahoo, MSN and AOL for IM and Email products
•	Built business cases to analyze the impact of potential product offerings on the Messaging P&L 
•	Managed external development teams and collaborated with partners and internal stakeholders to create an integrated project plan and meet all milestone dates
•	Analyzed Messaging service performance (including penetration, usage and churn, examining operational issues, trends and how those relate to seasonality and promotional activities) to support Messaging requirements for next generation devices

### VP Product Management, CoFounder @ Fountain Mobile
Jan 2004 – Jan 2006
* Built financial models to assess the feasibility of various product concepts
* Negotiated, built and maintained relationships with external vendors, partners and clients
* Bridged marketing and engineering effectively facilitate communication and help create an integrated product vision
* Designed product enhancements and new products to take advantage of emerging business opportunities

### Product Manager, Messaging Division @ Bigfoot Global Solutions Inc.
Jan 2003 – Jan 2004 | Cebu City, Philippines
* Created and tracked P&L for product line and lead budget process for general marketing activities and project specific line items
* Communicated with culturally diverse and geographically dispersed team to develop specific product requirements for both B2B and consumer customers,
* Developed product positioning and pricing strategies for new product lines
* Managed multi-departmental project team with members from creative services, internal and outsourced development teams, marketing, sales and customer service

### Director, Product Management & User Interaction @ Acacia Wireless Innovations Inc.
Jan 2002 – Jan 2003
* Lead product design team, conceptualized and designed multiple SMS products and services that were both handset and carrier agnostic
* Managed Development and QA teams, prioritized feature rollout and direct product evolution roadmaps throughout the entire Software Development Lifecycle
* Considered infrastructure implications when designing functionality to minimize scalability issues
* Wrote UI specifications and managed live documents for the development team for multiple products

### New Media Design Manager @ The Docspace Company Inc. (Acquired by Critical Path)
Jan 1998 – Jan 2000
* Created interface elements for website and web interface of the services to enhance the users experience
* Resolved marketing needs with developmental requirements while designing product prototypes
* Created product demos using Wireframes and rapid HTML prototyping


## Education
### B.Sc in Computer Science
Queen's University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johnpjoseph1

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Last updated: 2026-04-13